Afterword Contested, Vertical, Fragmenting: De-partitioning 'Northeast India' Studies

Our current spatial imaginations of Northeast India are comprehensible only in view of the moment of the Partition of British India in 1947. This chapter deals with four spatial issues to demonstrate how Partition changed the rules of the game and came to act as a pivot around which ‘writing the Northeast’ has revolved ever since. First, the history of Northeast India begins with Partition in 1947 — Northeast India is a new space. Second, Northeast India is a space of multiple contested incorporations. A third spatial perspective is verticality, the social importance of differences in land altitude. Fourth, the homeland logic that powered Partition continued to operate in Northeast India, turning it into a fragmenting space.

This approach helps us to reconsider the Partition of 1947 as a mindset that determines the way we study the region. Looking beyond the national scale, we need to devise research projects that treat Northeast India as a Northwest (of Southeast Asia), a South (of the Himalayas), a North (of Bangladesh, Arakan and Chinland), or a Centre with links to all these regions.